Press Coverage of Rohingya Issue: A Content Analysis of Four Newspapers In Jammu And Kashmir

Abstract

The aim of this study is to know the coverage of newspapers on the world fastest- growing refugee crisis and an ethnic minority group of Rohingya Muslims of Myanmar. Extreme repercussions of violence caused them to seek refuge in neighboring countries including Bangladesh, Thailand Malaysia and in many states of India. There are around 14,000 Rohingya refugees as per United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNCHR) registered with them in India out of which 7,000 are in Jammu (Abhishek, 2018). The propaganda by some sections of media label Rohingyas as a danger to national security which has created panic among the refugees. The Medecins Sans Frontiers (MSF) report quoted by Aljazeera (2017, December 14) says that 6,700 Rohingyas, including at least 730 children aged below five years, were killed in the fresh outbreak of violence when militants attacked the security forces on August 25, 2017. The incident draws media attention across the globe. The sudden rise in migration of Rohingya people to India including Jammu and Kashmir grabbed the attention of regional and national media of India. The broad objective of the present study is to investigate the framing and characterization of Rohingya issue in a period of one month (26 August to September 24, 2017) by print media of Jammu and Kashmir. This study used purposive sampling and analyzed the content of four newspapers publishing from two regions and explored their treatment whether positive, negative and neutral towards the Rohingya refugees. The study found that Greater Kashmir has published more content on Rohingya issue and most of that has been covered on humanitarian grounds. Although Kashmir based media has treated the Rohingya issue positively, Jammu based newspapers have portrayed the issue negatively.